Dreamer Easy

The refugee swap deal with the US is dubious, but getting at least some people out of offshore detention can only be a good thing. However, it looks increasingly unlikely that the swap will go ahead.

What do we know about the Central American refugee deal between the US and Australia? (GA, 25 November 2016)

Senior US Republicans criticise 'secret' refugee deal with Australia (GA, 25 November 2016)

Nauru refugees sceptical of resettlement deal with US, Sky reporter says after visit (GA, 29 November 2016) "...some are so weary about there being a solution to their situation that they’re managing expectations."

US will reportedly take only up to 400 refugees under Australia deal (GA, 29 November 2016)

Trump administration could scuttle refugee resettlement deal with US, White House concedes (ABC, 3 December 2016)

Turnbull insists US deal to resettle refugees from Nauru and Manus will survive Trump's inauguration (SMH, 4 December 2016)

Immigration boss Michael Pezzullo flies to America to sell refugee deal to Donald Trump officials (The Age, 13 December 2016)


Racism against non-white and/or non-Anglophone immigrants is of course inextricably entwined with Australia's refugee policies. Here's some recent news and some historical context.

I've been told to 'go back to my country' my whole life. First in playgrounds, now by Peter Dutton (GA, 25 November 2016) | Lebanese-Australians speak out over Peter Dutton's comments: 'That's not us' (ABC, 26 November 2016) | Meet with us or be quiet: Lebanese community issues demand to Dutton (SMH, 25 November 2016) | Peter Dutton isn't wrong, but that doesn't make him right (SMH, 23 November 2016) (Informed and nuanced commentary from Jacinta Carroll, head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's Counter Terrorism Policy Centre.)

Muslim immigration: new research throws doubt on the poll that shocked the nation (SMH, 22 November 2016) | There isn't a 'silent majority' of racists in Australia (SMH, 22 November 2016)

Enemy aliens: How my family's lives were changed by Australia's wartime internment camps (ABC, 28 November 2016)

Calling Australia home: stories of Australia's boat people (SMH, 24 November 2016)

ETA:

If Australia had its current refugee policy in 1939, we wouldn't be alive today (GA, 19 September, 2016). '"Refo" was a straightforwardly racist, pejorative term. Now Australian governments use more sophisticated language like "unlawful boat arrivals"... Regardless of the terminology, the underlying racist logic is the same.'

A powerful opinion piece from the New York Times, Would You Hide a Jew From the Nazis?, reminds us of the parallels between then and now: 'The vitriol in public speech, the xenophobia, the accusing of Muslims of all of our problems — these are similar to the anti-Semitism of the 1930s and '40s.'

And last but not least: Fact Check One Nation

Frankly, I'm knackered. Here goes:

btw, you get a lot of US stuff in this lj partly because the US dominates the Web, partly because I married an American and visit the country regularly, and partly because what happens in the US often influences or is relevant to what happens in Australia. For example, while racism Down Under and Up Over has different histories and characters, there's still a lot in common between them. So IMHO Reverend Denise Anderson's remarks about the shooting of young Black men by US police also have something to say to Australians:I think these words are especially relevant given the frightening return of One Nation. The response of many Australians is to jeer at Pauline Hanson's supporters as "rednecks". This is not quite the same thing as recognising our own racism, but would it be more effective to come down from the moral high ground and engage One Nation voters with a little respect and a lot of facts?

Muslims on what it's like to live in Australia (SMH, 2 May 2016) Pretty tough, and it's only going to get tougher. :(

How Long and Short Senate Terms are Allocated After a Double Dissolution (ABC, 25 April 2016) Antony Green elucidates the complexities.


Now some stuff from other countries.

Islamic State fighters caught in Iraq reveal motivations for jihad (ABC, 13 July 2016) Even this brief glimpse demonstrates that Daesh is about much more than fanatical belief. (Cf: Persecution pushing young Australian Muslims to the margins of society, says leader (SMH, 10 April 2015); The more we fear Islam, the greater the danger from terrorists (SMH, 16 May 2015)).

How one 'super-spreader' was responsible for nearly half of South Korean MERS cases (SMH, 12 July 2016)

South Korea covered up mass abuse, killings of 'vagrants' (AP, 19 April 2016) The way the victims of this "clean-up" for the 1988 Olympics were treated reminds me unsettlingly of descriptions of prison camps in North Korea.

Malawi's albinos at risk of 'total extinction,' U.N. warns (CNN, 1 May 2016) They are butchered for witchcraft purposes. Fucking hell.

Muslim anti-Isis march not covered by mainstream media outlets, say organisers (The Independent, 9 December 2015) Cut out and keep for the next time someone says Muslims don't speak out enough.

I'm on the Kill List. This is what it feels like to be hunted by drones (The Independent, 12 April 2016) "Friends decline my invitations and I have taken to sleeping outside under the trees, to avoid becoming a magnet of death for my family." Would that this was the SF it sounds like.

As the dirty dust of the election settles... (ABC

Election 2016: Where do the crossbenchers stand on the major issues? (ABC, 8 July 2016). Bob Katter of Katter's Australia Party wants immigration to be "virtually nil" except for selected persecuted religious minorities. This is obviously an anti-Muslim policy, but I think it's probably also an anti-Asian / South Asian one; while India, China, and the UK are the top three source countries for new migrants, white immigrants are effectively invisible.

Fact check: Why Peter Dutton's claims on the Coalition's record on refugees get mixed verdicts (ABC, 27 June 2016) (btw, we're going to lose Fact Check thanks to the Coalition's cuts to the ABC.) Before the election, the Immigration Minister explicitly linked refugees to terrorism. What a shame he's managed to scrape back in despite the huge swing against him in Dickson.

The resurgence of One Nation will have a frightening impact on Asian (and, I'm sure, South Asian) and Muslim Australians, and, I'm sure, asylum seekers and refugees. From The Drum (another victim of ABC cuts): Why simply calling Hanson racist doesn't help (7 July 2016) "As for the media: continue to treat Hanson as a circus freak if you wish, for our mock horror and cheap titillation (ooh you'll never guess what awful thing she said today!), but you are doing no service to anyone. She will not be ignored; she is, for now, significant. When her words are hateful and harmful, call them so. Point out her hypocrisies. Explain why she is wrong." I think this approach can be usefully used when talking to our fellow Australians - a dash of respect, so they'll listen, and a whole lot of facts. Perhaps we can start here: Majority of Australians say refugees who arrive by boat should be let in, poll finds (GA, 29 June 2016)

From now on, I'll be posting about Islam, Islamophobia, Park51, etc etc etc, over at my main lj, dreamer_easy.

In the comments to my first post on the whole Elizabeth Moon/Park51 mishegoss, I said this:

"In the seventies, Black feminist Audre Lorde wrote to Mary Daly criticising the absence of African goddesses from Daly's book Gyn/Ecology. When she received no response, it became an open letter, which is full of respect, gratitude, and good will. It's a model of how to disagree civilly - that is, treating the other person as a fellow citizen, someone of equal worth with whom you must find a way to get along. Now I am old and weary, I aspire to Lorde's grace."

The Open Letter is well known; when Daly passed away at the start of this year, numerous obits and blog postings made mention of it.

Lorde's insights into white feminism's failings are powerful, but thing that especially struck me was her willingness to talk, despite Daly's stony silence. No self-righteousness, no "calling out", just good will and openness - while Daly was guilty of, at best, defensive stonewalling, or, at worst, arrogantly ignoring her.

As it turns out:

Lorde lied.

I'm still slightly reeling.

Her biographer, Alexis De Veaux, found Daly's response amongst Lorde's papers. Daly's letter apologises for the delay in responding (Lorde sent her letter in May 1979, Daly replied that September) and states: "You have made your point very strongly and you most definitely have a point." Daly says she's left a message on Lorde's machine and gives her own phone number; and she suggests they meet in person to discuss Lorde's criticisms. And they did meet and talk for an hour.

Lorde claimed she had never received a reply when she published the letter in 1980 and again in 1984.

I found this out yesterday (I'm reading Gyn/Ecology right now) and was so boggled that I raced into the State Library of NSW to peruse De Veaux's biography, Warrior Poet, for myself. It was true. Lorde was a liar. No, worse, she was a slanderer - like the jealous cyberbullies who spread lies about me. My heart sank and my blood boiled. (I'm lucky someone didn't call an ambulance.)

Daly later wrote: "Apparently Lorde was not satisfied [with their talk], although she did not indicate this at the time." In a 1982 interview, Lorde admitted, "I had no response that had any satisfaction to it". Which can only have been terribly frustrating - but is worlds away from being completely ignored.

What to do, then? Crumple up and throw away the Open Letter? Refuse to read anything more by Lorde?

No. And, no.

The letter's language still offers hope and grace. I invite you. I ask that you be aware. I believe in your good faith. Thank you.

What's more, the letter's criticism of white feminism is still important and useful. De Veaux suggests that, for Lorde, Daly had come to stand for white feminism and all its failings. "Mary Daly the person, then, ceased to exist," she writes, "But as an icon, Daly was an easy, if unwilling, target".

And what's even more, Lorde's work, like Daly's, has that extraordinary power that feminism has, to grab hold of my brain and shake it until the world looks slightly different than it did before. I'm really only getting started on both of them. Too many books, too few years in a life.

Besides, I am too old and too tired to police the edges of my mind, now. I need all the good insights I can get, even if they sometimes come packaged with bad insights. In any case, regrettably, I myself am racist; if I place someone beyond the pale (so to speak) for their prejudice, I'll only find myself standing there next to them.

The genuine openness to talk, the grace and hope, are there in the Carl Brandon Society's statement on Elizabeth Moon and Wiscon. The Society clearly and firmly repudiates Ms Moon's posting, but concludes:

"We ask both the Wiscon concom and Ms. Moon to take advantage of her presence at Wiscon 35 to make programming opportunities for Ms. Moon to engage in open dialogue with the community on this topic. We consider this sort of dialogue to be a primary responsibility of the Carl Brandon Society as an organization — particularly given our history with Wiscon — and we welcome the opportunity to engage in it. We also welcome other voices to work together with CBS in this dialogue."

The chances of real communication would've been slender. Sadly, now they are zero.

But I think, in this case, the last word ought to belong to Mary Daly:

"This piece ("Open Letter") has been assigned as required reading by not a few professors in academentia to students in classes where Gyn/Ecology itself has not been assigned, or a mere handful of pages of this book have been required reading. This kind of selectivity is irresponsible. It imposes a condition of self-righteous ignorance upon students, often within the setting of 'Women's Studies'. This is, in my view, a worst case scenario of pseudoscholarship. It is, even if 'well-intentioned', divisive, destructive. It functions, at least subliminally, as a self-protective statement about the purity and political correctness of the professor."

ETA: In Remembrance of Mary Daly: Lessons for the Movement
__
Daly, Mary. Outercourse: the Be-Dazzling Voyage. North Melbourne, Spinifex Press, 1993.
De Veaux, Alexis. Warrior Poet: a biography of Audre Lorde. New York, W.W. Norton, 2004.

PS Elizabeth, if you ever happen to see this - it would be my great pleasure to send you a copy of Waleed Aly's readable book People Like Us. His thoughts on Islam and the West partly reflect your own, but will also provide insights you may not have expected. Email me (korman@spamcop.net) with a postal address (your details to be kept strictly confidential, of course).

So far, my responses to Elizabeth Moon's Park51 posting have been pretty simple stuff: take a few statements from the posting and see if they stand up to scrutiny. (There's more to this than just disagreement. Ms Moon's views are shared by many folks in the West. They may change their minds if given more accurate information.)

When it comes to some of the historical and political stuff, though, I'm all at sea. The last time I studied history was Tudor England in Year 8. Getting a grip on the complexities is going to take a lot more than reading a couple of books.

So when it comes to this part of the posting, I can't make a meaningful comment; I can only ask questions.

"It would have been one thing to have the Muslim victims' names placed with the others, and identified there as Muslims--but to use that site to proselytize for the religion that lies behind so many attacks on the innocent (I cannot forget the Jewish man in a wheelchair pushed over the side of the ship to drown, or Maj. Nadal's attack on soldiers at Fort Hood) was bound to raise a stink."

As you can see, Moon's ire here is partly based on a mistaken belief that Park51 would be a memorial to Muslims killed on 9/11. (On the one hand, I can see how such a memorial could be seen as provocative and divisive. On the other hand, I can't work out at all how Ms Moon arrived at this belief.) ETA: Just wanted to point this out: a lot of online commenters say that Ms Moon's posting called the community centre a "mosque". It didn't.

The wheelchair-bound Jewish man was Leon Klinghoffer, murdered by PLO terrorists in 1985 aboard the Achille Lauro, which they had hijacked. They shot him - in front of his wife - and threw his body and his wheelchair overboard.

The murder was needless, inexcusable brutality; it's no wonder it's stuck in Moon's mind. The thing is - and here's where my lack of nous becomes frustrating - were the PLO an Islamic organisation? Was their terrorism fuelled by religion? (And if not, what does this tell us about equating "Arab" with "Islam" with "terrorism"?)

The account given in Islamic Politics in Palestine suggests that the PLO was part of a secular movement, one which competed and clashed with Islamic groups. Similarly, The Dual Nature of Islamic Fundamentalism describes Islamic groups in Palestine regarding the secular PLO as Palestine's "internal enemy". (Similarly, I recall the conflict between Fatah - part of the PLO - and Hamas - an Islamic group - during Operation Cast Lead.)

I suspect the situation's far more complicated than anything a quick poke around in Google Books can explain. I'll keep reading. In the meantime, if anyone's got any insights, please share them!

Some parts of Elizabeth Moon's Park51 posting are more difficult to address than others. For example:

"The same with other points of Islam that I find appalling (especially as a free woman) and totally against those basic principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution...I feel that I personally (and many others) lean over backwards to put up with these things, to let Muslims believe stuff that unfits them for citizenship, on the grounds of their personal freedom."

Because Ms Moon doesn't specify what these "points of Islam" are, it's pretty much impossible to discuss them, except in the most general terms. It can be said that American Muslims are very typically American in their views. For example, most believe life is better for women in the US than in many Muslim countries.

Waleed Aly (and many, many others) point out the maddening tendency of politicians and commentators in the West to accuse Muslims of disrespecting, oppressing, and mistreating women - while Islamic politicians and commentators accuse Westerners of exactly the same thing. Caught in the cultural crossfire (often physically) are Muslim women, whether in the West or the Islamic world: they are spoken about, rather than being given a chance to speak.

Because of that, rather than add the voice of yet another slenderly informed white Western feminist to the noise, I'd like to link to some online commentary from Muslim women. I'll add more links to this list as I come across them. Here goes:

Muslim Women Don't See Themselves as Oppressed, Survey Finds

On 9/11, Listening to Muslim Women's Voices

Muslimah Media Watch

Loving and Leaving the Head Scarf

ETA: In Ms Moon's home state, the Texas Muslim Women's Foundation engage in various good works, including providing a domestic violence shelter for women of all faiths, and collaborate with other organisations.

She Who Disputes: Muslim Women Shape the Debate. A very readable 2006 report from the Muslim Women's Network, giving British Muslimah's views on numerous issues, from violence and safety to civic participation.

(btw, I've said that I'm not going to go and look for online responses to Ms Moon's posting, because of the slim chance of finding light rather than heat. However, I'll read anything that's recced to me - and if there are responses from Muslim women, I'm especially interested in seeing them.)

PS From July this year, the findings of a global survey on attitudes to gender equality.

Have continued my tiny contribution to better Muslim-Everybody Else relations with a one-liner in the Herald letters page, where there's been some worthwhile discussion in recent days. (Non-Australian readers may be surprised at the amount of comedy involved in the discussion. This is normal. It's partly our way of saying, "Actually, we're not really that worried.")

omg, someone proofread this, my eyeballs are hanging around my knees. ETA: Bless you, megthelegend. :)

Yesterday, I posted:

"The 'bad citizens' Ms Moon correctly identifies at the start of the essay are criminals: the corrupt judge, the rapist prison guard, and so on. But wearing a funny hat is not a crime. Nor is it an example of the vices of the failed citizen: "greed, dishonesty, laziness, selfishness, cruelty, anger/resentment, refusal to take responsibility for his/her own acts and their consequences". Which of these sins causes immigrants and their descendants to live near other people with similar backgrounds, or to speak their first languages? How are those behaviours provocative or offensive?

Were Ms Moon to respond, I think she'd probably explain that it wasn't her intention to equate "Groups that self-isolate, that determinedly distinguish themselves by location, by language, by dress" with the corrupt, selfish, or lazy citizens who do real and obvious damage. But in that case, why mention funny hats at all? Possibly, Ms Moon sees "self-isolation" as a minor form of "failed citizenship" - one end of a spectrum, perhaps with corrupt judges et al at the far end, and deliberately provoking inter-ethnic conflict somewhere in the middle.

Now there's a danger that I've just created a strawman, because what I'd like to do is take that idea of "self-isolation" as a minor failure of citizenship and interrogate it. Even if I've misinterpreted Ms Moon on this point, that perception, that immigrants keep to themselves rather than integrating as they ought, is a very common one, so it's worth asking two questions: Firstly, do Muslim immigrants actually isolate themselves in this way? Secondly, are there more meaningful measures of immigrants' success as citizens?

Before I can even get started I ran smack into a major hurdle - the diversity of American Muslims, which I think is summed up nicely in a 2002 Centre for Immigration Studies report with the observation that Los Angeles boasts both a Chinese Islamic Restaurant and a Thai Islamic Restaurant! According to that report, a quarter to a third of American Muslims are not immigrants. I'd like to address this diversity later in a posting of its own - for now, check out the report, which is brief but rich in detail.

That CIS report immediately allows us to address one of Ms Moon's three examples of "self-isolation": on the whole, Islamic immigrants to the United States don't "determinedly distinguish themselves by location". The report states: "Unlike the Muslim immigrants in Europe who live in ghetto-like areas, Muslim immigrants to the United States are highly dispersed." It identifies only one American town with a substantial Muslim immigrant population (30%).

What about language and dress? Here I'd like to speak to the Australian experience of Muslim immigrants. Back in 2006, our erstwhile Prime Minister complained of the failure of migrants to assimilate, and in particular to learn English. Experts pointed out that immigrants were keen to acquire English, but the government was failing to provide classes, denying thousands of people the chance to learn the language. What was more, a glance at the statistics showed that the proportion of Muslim immigrants who couldn't speak English well would have to be small.

As for dress, the most conspicuous item of Muslim clothing is not my hypothetical funny hat but hijab, the various coverings worn by women, which range from the headscarf to the full burqa. To my surprise and delight, a 2009 survey of Australians found that 81% of us didn't have a problem with the headscarf at all, largely seeing it as a matter of religious freedom and personal choice. If Australian Muslims are trying isolate themselves in this way, it's not working! (These tolerant attitudes, plus resistance from Muslimahs, bode ill for Fred Nile's proposed bill to ban the burqa. Now there's a bad citizen - trying to stir up fear for his own political gain.)

Obviously I can't simplistically assume that the US situation is identical to the Australian situation; I'll have to dig up some relevant American figures. If the US experience is similar to ours, though, there's no reason to be concerned that Muslim immigrants are isolating themselves.

Putting that aside for now, I'd like to suggest that there are more important measures of integration than these superficial ones - and you can find them in the biography on Ms Moon's Web site. IMHO, she's more qualified to comment on citizens' contributions to their nation and neighbourhood than many of us: she served in the Marines, was a volunteer paramedic, served on her town's council and library board, and is currently restoring a patch of prairie (what Australians would call "bush regeneration"). That's an extraordinary record, and frankly, I'm rather shamed by it. IMHO, Ms Moon is right when she says "the business of a citizen is the welfare of the nation" - and those are clearly not empty words.

I think this is how an immigrant community's integration into the "mainstream" should be judged: by their involvement, their participation, their service. And in my view, Park51 is an example of this good citizenship. It will invest a hundred million dollars in the neighbourhood, replacing a derelict building with facilities for the whole community - pool, gym, classrooms, prayer room, exhibition spaces, shops, restaurant, etc - comparable to the YMCA and the Jewish Community Center. The organisation and people behind it, progressive Muslims who consistently denounce terrorism, intend the centre to help foster better relations between Muslims and everybody else. In my view, this is not isolation or insult. If anything qualifies as successful citizenship, this is it!

( A couple of links )

I want to make this posting out of respect for Elizabeth Moon. Why respect? Because I've met her and was inspired by her; because she's published lots of original SF novels and I'm still trying to get there; because it's her country and not mine; because, although I haven't the heart to check Google, I'll bet right now she is being dragged through the mud all over the place - not her posting about Park51; her. Online fandom, and indeed the net in general, don't know how to attack opinions - only how to attack people. (ETA: That's an overstatement. It's just woefully typical!)

You'll know, from my postings on the subject here and elsewhere, that Ms Moon and I have very different views on Park51 and on Islam generally. What's more, as an Anglo-Australian, I'm very aware that I'm not affected by the issues of discrimination and assimilation that her posting raises.

Rather than address either of those issues, then, what I want to do is question some of the statements in Ms Moon's posting, statements I believe to be factually incorrect.

Ms Moon states:

"When an Islamic group decided to build a memorial center at/near the site of the 9/11 attack, they should have been able to predict that this would upset a lot of people."

Firstly, the posting refers repeatedly to a "memorial center", which I don't think accurately describes the project: it's a community centre, which will include a memorial to the victims of 9/11, but also a swimming pool and gym, classrooms, a restaurant, an auditorium (and of course the prayer room which opponents call a "mosque").

But more importantly, in my opinion, Ms Moon is wrong in her belief that the planners of Park51 were hoping to provoke controversy - or that at least, they should have expected it.

For one thing, in the prayer room at the Pentagon, built on the very site of the 9/11 attack, hundreds of American Muslims have prayed every day since 2002 without anyone objecting.

For another - and for me, this is the clincher - the announcement of Park51 did not create a controversy. It had official and popular approval and minimal media attention. There was no to-do until months later, when anti-Islamic pundits made it into an Issue - and politicans jumped on board.

In my opinion, they are responsible for the angry arguments which are dividing Americans right now - not the planners of Park51. If anyone is neglecting their duty as citizens, it's the media figures and politicians using the community centre for their own cynical ends - especially those spreading suspicion, hate, and lies.

As Mayor Michael Bloomberg stated:

"We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors. That's life. And it's part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11."

tl;dr With respect, Ms Moon is incorrect: the planners of Park51 did not intend to provoke controversy; nor should they have expected it. There was no controversy until right-wing pundits invented one.